"Faith!" she answered, smiling through some tears, "because I liked my own company too little to travel forth with no better. I have delayed that perhaps I might hear of honest folk, travelling at least so far as Rotterdam, who would bear me company. But I may not tarry much longer or all my money will be spent, so indeed I will now be gone with all speed." Harrison looked at her. Could any man, with a spark of chivalry in his breast, endure to think of this bright young creature going forth alone, to cross half the world, as ignorant of the perils that might surround her as though she were still the child he had pulled out of the lily pond? Could he forsake his little playfellow? Richard was not in the habit of hesitating. "Mistress Audrey," he said eagerly, "why cannot you take your journey on Thursday when I do, and let me be as your brother to guard you? God do so to me, and more also, if I bring you not safe to your father's hands. Will you not take me for your brother, Audrey? For the sake of old times, and the memory of those we both did love and reverence, you will trust me?" "In truth," she answered, "I knew not how sore I needed a brother till this very day." She looked out of the door across the empty landscape, brown woods and russet fields; nowhere, save in the little white cottage below the copse, was there a friend for her in all the country. Who would burden themselves with a penniless girl? And if her kinsfolk were too careless or too proud to own her, she on the other hand, had been too closely kept in her own circle of well-born neighbours to have any acquaintances among the Nonconformists who were now flying from England. Her gay courage had always made her strive to ignore the difficulties that lay before her; but she knew only too well how difficult, nay almost impossible for a lonely girl, was the journey that lay before her; for those were days when a woman needed a strong arm and a ready blade to protect her among strangers. She had still kept putting off her inevitable journey, telling herself that companions might yet be found to share the perils of a voyage half across the world. But in the bottom of her heart she knew that she might linger in Inglethorpe Hall till she was grey-headed before the desired protector appeared. Now, by a sort of miracle, came a friend of old times, pat to the minute! Would it not be childish, nay wrong, to hesitate? Harrison's kind hand still held hers, his eyes were bent on her face in anxious waiting for her decision. She turned towards him, and he caught her meaning. "Then shall it be so?" he cried gaily. "And you will be my little sister? I will indeed do all I may to make the rough ways smooth for you, and you will pardon your brother's lack of courtly fashions?"